Why I launched a feminist movement for the ad industry
By Leah Morris, Editor of The Mavens.
Trigger warning: this article mentions workplace sexual assault.
“I wish I was a boy.”
I remember thinking this when I was as young as 5 or 6, when my grandmother would tell my brother all the cool things he could grow up to be. And while she had more internalised misogyny than Defence Minister Linda Reynolds (who called Brittany Higgins a ‘lying cow’), it wasn’t strictly Nana’s fault.
The world we live in does not champion girls and women, and at the current trajectory it will be 101 years until we have gender equality in Australia (Finance Womens Index).
As a thirty-year-old woman now, I don’t wish I was a man.
Although I do envy the swaggering confidence that they seem to display in every facet of society.
It’s something that comes with a lifetime of affirmation. You see, it makes a big difference when your role models look like you. And I don’t look like Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach, J. Walter Thompson or Charles Saatchi (I’m better looking, for starters).
Nevertheless, their larger-than-life portraits are splashed across the walls of plush agency foyers, reminding every female employee who’s the OG.*
They say you can’t be what you can’t see, but somehow I did. I left Nana’s memory in my hometown of Wangaratta and moved to Melbourne to become a creative copywriter.
In March 2020, Australia went into lock-down and I began to think about my career – the purpose of it. Away from the conditioning of society, safe within the walls of my flat, I imagined my future.
Me, an energetic fifty-something swanning about a bustling creative agency (my surname in the title), mentoring bright young things. Long, champagne-soaked lunches. Penning genius lines of copy, watching as my words become embedded in the Australian vernacular. Making my clients rich. Speaking at a national conference, the audience rising to a standing ovation…
Hold it there.
The statistics say only 1 in 4 agency leaders are female, even less for founders. How am I supposed to envision a future like that, with statistics like these?
And that’s when I realised: if I wanted to make it in this industry, I had to change the industry.
So I put my copywriter cap on and launched Mavens, an online publication to champion other women working in advertising and media. As the now-editor of a feminist industry publication, I’m making noise.
As are others. Ogilvy copywriter Georgie Waters launched This Is A Statement to combat workplace sexual harassment. Innocean CEO Jasmin Bedir launched Fck The Cupcakes to highlight misogyny in the workplace, and reject International Women’s Day as the only day we discuss it. Jane Evans’ Uninvisibility Project is celebrating the achievements of ad women over 50.
I believe that the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
I refuse to walk past the fact that while 56% of agency employees are women, the management ratio is only 27% female (Advertising Council of Australia). Which is contributing to a gender pay gap of between 23% for media agencies and 25% for advertising agencies (B&T and Honeycomb Strategy).
It’s not good enough. Especially when you consider that around 80% of purchase decisions are made by women. In an industry driven by commercialism, excluding us isn’t just detrimental to progress. It hinders the commercial success of our clients.
When I was digging into the aforementioned statistics, I didn’t want to believe what I was reading but I knew I needed to find out more. So I reached out to my growing Mavens community and conducted a Gender Diversity Study.
Which delivered more concerning results (27% of respondents said they’d been sexually harassed at work). Representation of LGBTQ+ people was really low, too.
I learned that for many women, agencies aren’t respectful (let alone rewarding) workplaces.
They’re borderline hell.
Said one anonymous respondent: ‘I have often been disrespected, sexually abused and verbally abused by older, senior males in my workplace. My opinions or professional expertise have been dismissed because I’m female and bossy. I have been sexually objectified and humiliated. A lot of my professional peers are women but as I move up the ladder there are less and less. I have to work harder to be heard amongst my male colleagues.’
Another said: ‘I have been screamed at. I have been stood over and mansplained, to the point where it happened so often that I started to stand up when it happened. We then played a weird game where I stood up so they sat down, then I sat down so they stood up. And so on.’
And another:
‘In January I was leading a project team and one of the members of the team was a man in his sixties. I said “Happy New Year” and he replied “Have you been a good girl lately?”
It was incredibly disrespectful and inappropriate.’
And another: ‘I was sexually assaulted on a work trip, by a client’s colleague, and told to drop the complaint as it would reflect badly on the agency and affect the client’s likelihood of continuing to work with us.’
Although prolific, misogyny and sexual abuse aren’t the only issues affecting women in advertising and media.
There are no real pathways for women, especially women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
In my study one woman recounted being the only person (in an agency of 40) to be stood down due to COVID-19: ‘I was the only female BIPOC in the company. When I asked my manager for the reason why, they could not tell me and said it was upper management’s decision and they did not have to disclose the reason.’
In her story, the lack of respect is appalling.
It’s time our industry championed women properly. Respect isn’t enough. We need to invest in women’s professional development, provide mentorship, offer the best opportunities, enter them in awards, increase their visibility, be flexible with their work arrangements and celebrate their wins. And for chrissakes, pay them what they’re worth.
If you or someone you care about has been affected by sexual assault, you can contact 1800 RESPECT for confidential support.
*Original Gangster.
